Biographies

The Institute for Predictive Sonobotanics has several scientists working on the research into Predictive Sonobotanics.

Marije Baalman

Born in 1978 in Pingjum, Frisia, the Netherlands, Marije was from a young age interested in (re-)creating realities. In her youth she mostly created these in stories, but as a surprise to some people in her surroundings, when going to university, she chose to study Applied Physics at the University of Technology in Delft. Her study there was accompanied by an engagement in role playing, a form of improvisation theatre. After a one-year course in Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Marije moved to Berlin to engage in the creation of sonic realities by the use of Wave Field Synthesis. Currently she is working on a Ph.D. on that topic. Meanwhile, she had started creating models of creatures in computation and sound (e.g. "Scratch" in 2004), and so it was no wonder, that when she met Alberto de Campo during his guest professorship at TU Berlin, and - during some late night discussions in the studio - heard about de Campo's true motivations to become a composer, his story about the plants - up until then mostly considered children's fantasy by others - caught Marije's interest to create a model of these plants. While Alberto was on his Chinese expedition, Marije searched in the more obscure botanic literature for references to these plants and - coincidentally - came across the name of a distant relative of hers, now widely known as Prof. Dr. Hortensia Audactor. Gaining access to (then largely unpublished) scientific descriptions of Periperceptoida Dendriformis and its variants, Marije set out to create models of these intriguing plants. When Alberto returned, they founded the Institute for Predictive Sonobotanics.
After founding the Institute for Predictive Sonobotanics with Alberto in 2005, followed with numerous exhibitions across Europe of the first models, Marije moved to Montreal, where she met Elio who was eager to join in the Institute to model sonobotanic plants from the Southern hemisphere.

Alberto de Campo

Born in 1964 in Graz, Austria, young Alberto's first experiences with sonobotanics was when he went to play alone in the surrounding mountains. There, in places barely visited by other humans, he found plants he could not find back in the encyclopedia at home. He was most entranced by the part melodic, part noiselike, sounds of these colorful plants. Though he never saw significant changes in their visual exterior, he noted during repeated visits that its sounds were always changing, slowly evolving from one visit to the next. Certain biographers of de Campo claim that these experiences led him to become a composer and sound artist. Indeed, he chose to study classical composition, jazz and electronic music, and soon found that many of the melodies in local folk songs were quite similar to the plant sounds he heard as a young boy. However, during most of his life, Alberto was occupied with studying, researching and teaching, in places like CREATE/UC Santa Barbara, the Music Department at Academy for Media and Arts Cologne, the Music University Graz, the Institute for Sonoaviatics (of which he is co-founder and head of its Austrian section), and being involved in art projects together with Andres Bosshard, earweego, Julian Rohrhuber, Bill Fontana, and others.
Only on a recent visit to China - shortly after his guest professorship at the TU Berlin - did he finally find some proof of his notions of sonobotanics. Together with the happy coincidence of getting acquainted with M. Baalman shortly before, this led to the foundation of the Institute for Predictive Sonobotanics.
Currently, de Campo is also engaged in an interdisciplinary research project on data sonification at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) in Graz.

Elio Bidinost

Global citizen Elio Bidinost, grew up with Italian parents in South Africa, where he was quite fascinated by the flora of the African lands. After pursuing a career in film in the UK, he studied Design and Computation Arts at Concordia, and has been running the SensorLab at Concordia. Learning about the work Marije did on Predictive Sonobotanics in Europe, Elio was eager to contribute with his design and physical computing skills to create new sonobotanic models of Periperceptoidae found in nature only in the Southern hemisphere.

Hannes Hölzl

While he is not directly involved in the work shown here, Hannes Hölzl has been a seminal figure in the formation of Predictive Sonobotanics.
Born 1974 in Bolzano/Italy, he works in various disciplines orbiting around the central focus of sounds in space: from programming to composition, from installation to improvised performance, from ambient listening to synthesis of unpredictable sound and coding odd behaviour into semi-intelligent sonic entities.
As co-founder of the Institute for Sonoaviatics (led by Swiss sound artist extraordinaire Andres Bosshard), he has been involved in cutting edge sound art/research in a number of disciplines, some of which as innovative as Dracosonics (the study of sounds made by flying objects, often tied to strings). He has been an avid sonobotanist from the start and his experience and intuition has contributed substantially to their development of earlier incarnations of the sonobotanic models.

© 2005-10 - IPSO-FACTO